Blue Plate Special

Reviewed by Victoria Gonzales for Reader Views (11/09) The novel begins with a Jewish proverb, "What the daughter does, the mother did." Any woman or teen girl can connect with this book if they have ever been in love or made a mistake. This is a beautiful, touching, and well-written book. The style is wonderful; it really enhances the book to read a little bit of each woman's story as the novel progresses. The connections between the women are fascinating to discover little by little, and the story is so interesting. Desiree's story is written entirely in free verse poetry in first person. The author, Kwasney, is not only an excellent writer, but also a good poet; for example she writes: "I've never been inside/ randolph's department store/ I thought it was strictly/ for the blue hairs./ a saleslady with/ apple red lipstick that bleeds/ into the cracks around her mouth/ eyes us as we come through the door." Desiree leaves her home after she discovers she is pregnant. The two other women are equally as intriguing. Madeline has an irresponsible mother and discovers love for the first time. Ariel also falls in love, but finds that it was not what she expected. I would recommend expanding upon this novel, and it would be wonderful if the story continued with either the same women, or introduced new characters. It is a very good idea, and though this story is fine on its own, it would be enhanced if it were a series. The author is very good at making this novel accessible to every woman. She understands women of different generations, and shares this knowledge with the reader. My favorite part was finding the small details that connected the women through the three stories. It is just such a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it to any woman who wants to understand herself, or other women in her life. "What the daughter does, the mother did" is a perfect introduction to the novel, and also would make a good conclusion, I think the author wants the reader to realize that we are all more similar than we are different, and we would do well to share our experiences with each other and learn from them and become better women. I highly recommend "Blue Plate Special" by Michelle D. Kwasney to mothers and daughters alike.

Blue Plate Special is best if you go into it knowing nothing more than what you read on the jacket flap. It will reveal itself to you bit by bit until you are left sitting there stunned and extremely impressed, at least I think so. Unfortunately for me I knew a bit more than what the jacket tells you but it didn't matter. It just gave me a few more clues to work with. I was still very very impressed with Kwasney's ability to weave these three stories together. It's heartbreaking, honest, raw and real. All three girls have rough lives for one reason or another. While there was just a tad bit of overlapping in their struggles (a dilemma or two were similar for two of the girls) I thought Kwansney did a great job of distinguishing their voices and making them all likeable. I thought it was a nice touch that Desiree's part was written in verse. She used far fewer words but you get to know her just as well as the other girls. I think Blue Plate Special is a book that begs to be read a second time. Once reading it you know a lot more than when you started and reading it a second time would allow you to put together the pieces as you read, more so and start to notice things you might have missed the first time. This is a book that will stick with me and I was extremely impressed by it.

This book is suggested for young adults but I am far from that and I couldn't put it down once I started reading. It was amazing how the author told the emotional stories of three separate lives and brought them all together in a suspenseful ending. This book deals with the hard times in 3 teen girls lives, which can be painful to read at times. All is not good in their growing up years as each has her own problems to deal with: an alcoholic mother, death, rape, controlling boyfriend, obesity and their plates are heaped full of more than they think they can handle. It's amazing how Michelle handled each character with love and empathy. This is one book, that deserves to be read and re-read.

The women in Michelle Kwasney's Blue Plate Special are beautifully formed from the very first pages. From Madeline, the butt of jokes because she's overweight - and what would they do if they knew about her alcoholic mother? - to Desiree, a happy teenager with her first love, who writes in prose; and then there's Ariel, daughter of a loving mother and a father who adores her from his jail cell. Three different women who found happiness, whose changed circumstances affected their lives in single instants. The familial connection between the three women emerged as the story progressed, causing me to, more than once, exclaim out loud. When a single instant can make or break a woman, the reader will find him- or herself sucked into this marvelous story. Kwasney's Blue Plate Special is appropriate for teenage readers as well as for an adult looking for a really good story. I couldn't put it down, and the only problem with this book was that it was a "quick read."

My #1 test for greatness in a book is whether I become lost in its pages. When I read Blue Plate Special, I forgot to eat dinner and stayed up three hours past my bedtime in order to finish it. I don't remember being so drawn into characters since, maybe, Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. Ariel, Madeline and Desiree are like my sisters, or parts of the inner me that nobody knows. My #2 test is connected to how I read the book. Some books I tend to race through because I want to see how the plot develops. That's ok, but, for me, a truly great book is one where I savor each word because the words seem to have been chosen with such care. Blue Plate Special was that kind of book. As much as I was drawn into the plot, I also was enjoying the prose the way one enjoys a beautiful poem. I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to know the end, yet I didn't want the end to come. That paradox is precisely my definition of a great novel. I loved Michelle Kwasney's two earlier novels, Baby Blue and Itch, and was deeply moved by the main character in Itch, but this adult novel seems to have brought the author to a new depth and height of creative achievement. The hardest thing about reading a wonderful book like Blue Plate Special is that my subsequent reads pale in comparison. I have read 3 novels since Blue Plate Special and they just don't know how to make me skip dinner and read into the early morning hours. I guess I'll just have to wait for Michelle Kwasney's next book!